**3. Look… are they dwarfs? Little ants? Fairies? No. they are children: storytelling, theater and childhood education notions, aspects and concepts**

The relation between art and education is an issue that has been discussed for a long time: it seems it is necessary to advocate for obvious themes. Most important art-educators know that art and education is a successful marriage and a central combination for a critical, emancipating and creative educational formation of human beings.

As Desgranges puts it, it is necessary "to understand art as education while pure art, not necessarily educational art in [8]". Put in another way, the focus should be on the experience that art provides, instead of pushing children to rationalize and express verbally the result of an experience. Shall we give a rational meaning for all actions? According to Benjamin, when a person gives a meaning for a social fact, one can call that experience. Should this meaning be necessarily rational?

From this reasoning, there are two questions. First: how stories or the storytelling may get closer to children in the educational context? Second: how does the "royal wedding" between theater and childhood education take into consideration playfulness and the recreational needs of small children?

Storytelling has the power of instigating joy, observation, imagination, ludic issues, vocabulary, oral language and writing skills. Furthermore, it is a bridge between reality and fantasy: the two worlds that children inhabit. Storytelling as a front door to the theater or as a perpassing feature for doing art: it is the same of thinking theater as a potential contribution to the Childhood Education.

How is the relation between art and education perceived and experienced in the everyday life of a school? I would say that childhood education with art itself is surrounded and perpassed by arrangements that people would call mess, disorder and chaos and all of them might be true. However, what's the problem with mess, disorder and chaos? The order is a result of disorder: would it even be possible to create without experimentation, noise and movement? "Mess" might be a basic condition for exploring, creating and transforming one thing into another, a space in another to (re)construct new learnings and knowledge.

Curiosity is a fuel for learning. By playing and getting captivated (by art), small children discover the world and themselves slowly and in their time through building learning processes. At the Childhood Education, children understand the world through senses and imagination. They explore the world through vision, hearing and touch—not in a table writing words that make any sense.

Children learn to have fun: the essence of learning is ludic. Playing for children is a language and way of communication with the world and people around. It is also a venue for the expression of dreams, fears, creativity and acquisition of autonomy. Playing with games—the goal shall not be the competition, win or lose—small children get stimulated for team work and build up their social, moral, emotional, cognitive and psychomotor traits.

Games and learning have a direct and clear although not direct correlation. Put in another way, children do not play with the aim of learning a specific content or skill: children play for joy. Overall, when a game has a specific direction, joy is out of the game and playing has another function or essence. Learning is a direct consequence of playing, but that must not be its first aim.

Learning in games is spontaneous, natural and inherent to playing. Children learn playing and there is no need to rationalize the processes. Storytelling has a similar

#### *Having a New Point in Each Story: Potential Insertions of Theater in Childhood Education DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.113002*

process: by listening or telling a history (orality), children are having fun and learning. Thus, the ludic provides learning and has no intention of describing a formal process with duties, evaluations or the generation of a "product" at the end.

It is correct to say that a specific game will develop physical, motor or social skills: by running, children develop spatial and motor skills; by listening or telling a story, children develop orality, vocal repertory, focus and social interaction; by playing hide-and-seek and/or jumping rope, children learn to count and have autonomy, etc.

Variegated examples of the interrelation between playing and learning processes could be mentioned, but the point is: by jumping rope with friends and counting one to 10 to have fun, learning is an organic process mixed with playing. The knowledge of counting one to 10 is built naturally, thus it is not an imposition. In the opposite direction, when children have to jump a rope with the specific aim of learning how to count from one to 10, the fear of making a mistake will be a substitute for joy and fun. Tests and judgments might inhibit the learning process.

In this sense, variegated games and the potential of each for children's growth and learning could be mentioned, such as motor coordination, autonomy, vocal and body expression, body perception, balance, ability, imagination, creativity, logic thinking, etc., although the relevance of playing in the early childhood is not the focus of this work. However, it is worthy of mention that if children do not play, they will face challenges to read and interact.

Both through the storytelling and the theater, the learning process might be developed as the outcome of a ludic narrative. Thus, learning might be an outcome of a story or an attitude of the narrator. The encounter, sharing, complicity and exchange between the storyteller and the one who listens is the most important and more relevant factor: this provides the experience of a story or, better saying, a play. The experience of playing through a story is the opposite of a productivity thinking or the idea that everything has to have a utility.

From a child's curiosity and willingness, the tendency to explore games come into play. By playing, children understand and build their own perspective, identity and perception of the world. Adults and children live in the same world: the way each one of them understands and behaves in the world differentiates them. By playing, children learn to interact with the outside world and vice versa, thus they assimilate external knowledge and information to their internal experience.

Theater and education have the potential of uniting and complementing theory and practice at the time of learning, whereas children are heard and respected in their wishes and necessities. Theater in education might be understood as a venue for social, cultural and esthetic education.

Childhood Education has an important social task in children's formation, as its main objective is the education of a human being, as well as his/her relation with the world and other people. At the Childhood Education, issues, such as recognition, self-respect and respect for the other, are approached. All these issues are approached by playing and through body recognition: "By discovering manners by which we can develop body expressions, we discover new ways to move, new expressions and resources that we might use in relation with other bodies in social relations in [9]".

The relation between adults and children is central to the Childhood Education. Most modern educational approaches raise the relevance of professors as partners of children: not the professors who "have" knowledge, but the professors who *build* knowledge with small children. In this line of reasoning, Lev Semenovic Vygotsky (1896–1934) is central, as the researcher developed the sociohistorical-cultural approaches that later became the cultural-historical psychology. According to this

author, the social, historical and cultural situations are central to the development of human beings.

Vygotsky argues that human beings are in a constant process of lifelong humanization. In other words, children are not born ready but get dated influence for their intellectual development—historical, cultural, social and spatial. Therefore, professors are mediators to support children to interact with the world and themselves.

According to Vygotsky, the aim of (formal or informal) education is to support children in acquiring tools of their own culture. By teaching children know how to use those tools and a door is open for them to control their own behaviors, thus gaining autonomy and reaching the development of superior mental functions. Therefore, for this author the process of teaching and learning must respect the fact that children acquire tools in social interactions with adults and other children under different circumstances of formal and informal learning. In other words, for Vygotsky the main goal of education is not "to provide" children abilities and knowledge, but measures to support them in acquiring superior mental functions and own reasoning.

Vygotsky [10] then develops a theory of superior mental functions that human beings have. Elemental mental functions—such as reflections, motor development and perception—are native to human beings and animals. Those functions depend on the maturation to develop and include feelings, spontaneous attention, sensorimotor intelligence and associative memory.

Superior mental functions are restricted to human beings and are cognitive processes acquired through teaching and learning. At the superior mental functionsmediated perception, deliberate memory and logical thinking are promoted. Mediated perception is the capacity of concentration to a stimulus, for instance, distinguish and categorize a color or find a word in a page full of printed words. Deliberate memory is the tactics of memory to remember something. Logical thinking is related to our capacity of solving problems mentally through logic and other strategies.

All superior mental functions are acquired culturally, which are developed according to influences in the environment, common and specific cultural practices, and mental tools a culture develops to carry out such practices. According to Vygotsky [10], these functions become deliberate, mediated and internalized behaviors.

Deliberate superior mental functions are controlled by the person, not the environment, thus it is based on each person's choice. Behavior guided by superior mental functions might focus or be guided by specific aspects from the environment, such as ideas, perceptions and images and ignore others. Deliberate superior mental functions are not dependent on the environment immediately or directly but mediated by cultural tools.

To understand Vygotsky's theory, one has to have in mind four relevant concepts: interaction, mediation, internalization and zone of proximal development. Interaction is related to the fact that knowledge is a product of interpersonal relations, exchanges and interactions of a person with his or her environment: interaction is thus the result of a relation with the other and might be exchanged with a collective. The way children think, remember and observe is tailored by previous interactions with professors, parents and friends. In other words, what a child knows is worth, as well as how a child thinks and remembers the knowledge.

Mediation is the fact that knowledge is mediated by someone or some element, for instance, a professor, a book and education activity. Through mediation, superior mental functions are socially constituted and culturally transferred. Here comes into the scene the professor as mediator: the professor has cultural tools and is responsible

#### *Having a New Point in Each Story: Potential Insertions of Theater in Childhood Education DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.113002*

for the stimulation to make the student interested by them. By knowing Vygotsky's approach, professors can understand that their role in the teaching and learning process is more related to the development of superior mental functions than in a product.

Internalization is related to the process of internalizing culture, cultural tools and accumulated human knowledge. Human beings build and internalize knowledge through language, as it transmits superior mental functions: language and thinking are connected, thus when language and thinking are connected an external behavior gets mature into one's mind. Human beings build and internalize knowledge through language that will transmit superior mental functions: as language and thinking are connected, external behaviors "grow in mind" and keep same structures, focus and functions as their external predecessors. The so-called General Genetic Law of Cultural Development is the moment when all functions are constant in a child: "first, on the social level, and later, on the individual level; first between people (interpsychological), and then inside the child (intra-psychological) in [11]".

The fourth and most important concept is the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD): it is the reflection of the complex relation between learning and development and is related to the potential of becoming someone through the access of a "social other". This process might be facilitated by a professor, an adult or a friend. ZPD is the distance between the actual levels of development of an individual to solve problems alone (zone of real development) and the levels of development of an individual to solve problems with orientation or collaboration with more capable partners (zone of potential development) (Vygotsky, 1978). In other words, this is the distance between what a child knows by her/himself and what might be achieved with the support of another person. In-between zones, the learning happens, as this is a process being built.

The Zone of Proximal Development is a particularly important concept in theater teaching, when one thinks on the relation among children and the theater professor: such a partnership is a potential cognitive and social development of small children. Vygotsky says that a game is a source for ZPD: "Play is a source of development and creates the zone of proximal development in [11]".

Vygotsky chose the word "zone" because in his reasoning children's development is not linear but a continuum of abilities and skills in different levels. The word "proximity" refers to a limited zone of abilities and skills that will develop in the near future.

In sum, Vygotsky's historic-cultural theory or approach embraces complex actions combining two processes: natural and cultural development. On the one hand, natural development is biological; on the other hand, cultural development is an outcome of human beings interacting with artifacts and people so learning promotes development. In other words, children have to grow up to learn but some cognitive, social or language developments depend on what children have learned. Therefore, intelligence is a behavior that might be learned and taught.

According to Vygotsky, it is worth for children's development to talk with other children and adults about problems and concepts to understand them. The author used to say: imagination is worth and indivisible from real thinking in small children, thus they are also of worth in childhood development.

Vygotsky also highlighted the relevance of games for children's development, especially the dramatic or make-believe game. Children's performance in a game is better than in a normal situation of learning. Games are the "magnifying lens" for childhood development and children will perform above their overall potential: "In play the child is always behaving beyond his age, above his usual everyday behavior; in play he is, as it were, a head above himself. Play contains in a concentrated form, as the focus of a magnifying glass, all developmental tendencies; it is as if the child tries to jump above his usual level in [11]".

Some researchers of Vygotsky tested theories. One of them, Zinaida Istomina (qtd. Roopnarine, 2013), compared words children between four and 5 years of age could remember in a dramatic game or in a situation of regular learning: a shopping list was given to a group of children to buy things in a bakery, thus a scenario was stated for them to play with other children and a normal list was provided to another group of children to memorize words. As the outcome, children who participated in the game memorized more words: "In a 4-year-old's play, we can observe higher levels of such abilities as attention, symbolizing, and problem solving than in the others situations in [12]".

From the social experiments from Vygotsky's theory, researchers demonstrated that make-believe develops abilities in children, as the capacity of self-regulation of physical, social and cognitive behavior, which is the capacity of children to follow external or internal rules, instead of impulsive behavior. In the make-believe, as in any other kind of game, rules must be followed and this provides to children space to the practice of self-control: playhouse, for instance, has rules such as the mom and the dad who behave differently from children; at the superhero, a hero and a villain are expected.

The make-believe and/or play freely also promotes the cognitive development of small children. At the time children play with objects transforming them—such as a block into a truck or the pencil into a magic wand—they develop the basis for the abstract thinking, splitting the object from its meaning. The game will be more fruitful if objects are not realistic, as in the above-mentioned examples.

Researches on children's development, as well as researches on children are part of the history of humankind and are still a concept to be revisited. According to Clarice Cohen [13], children's interaction in the world is related to the understanding of childhood. Although children always existed, the idea and/or concept of childhood is a modern issue. Childhood is a historical process built according to cultural and social characteristics of a time. Currently, children are recognized as people with rights, including the right to become a citizen. These rights are granted by world organizations, such as The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF)4 , as well as other organizations and laws around the world.

The school has a main role in regard to the social construction of childhood. With the raise of childhood or as its consequence, there are other specializations, such as pediatrics, development psychology and pedagogy [14]. Childhood as social category is constantly changing and has quite peculiar characteristics. According to Sarmento, the concept of childhood strengthened with children into economic spheres and has two directions: first, in peripheral countries with child labor and, second, in marketing issues as children are both promoters of products (publicity) and consumers. Currently, there's a market of specific products for children and it is growing.

There's a wild variety of cultural products for children in the market, such as cinema, cartoons, amusement parks, games, television and others. These cultural products generate other products, such as fashion, food, tools, educational material, recreational services, etc.: the list is long. Market for children is one of the biggest markets in the world and includes franchising all around the world. Due

<sup>4</sup> UNICEF is a United Nations' arm since 1946 to promote rights of children.

#### *Having a New Point in Each Story: Potential Insertions of Theater in Childhood Education DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.113002*

to globalization, children around the world—Japan, Brazil, the USA, Germany, etc. —access same products and share same preferences, although such accesses are unequal and exclusionary. For example, watch cartoon from Japanese studios; collect Pokémon cards; play videogames; read and watch Harry Potter; eat MacDonald's; watch Disney, etc.

However, it is worth to highlight that even if children have the same supply of products, they access them differently, both due to cultural and social context issues. Put in other words, at the same time children may access a "global culture", they live in "local cultures and realities". Another important issue is that all products children access were once developed by an adult that might stereotype children.

The end of childhood is often discussed as a consequence of a supposed loss of children's innocence and purity, based on the fact that children are often exposed to all places of social life, such as sexualization and violence. In this sense, two kinds of childhood are placed on the table: the real and the ideal childhoods. Therefore, children are in the center of postmodern debates. Children are often subject to labeling, classification, explanation and attempts to tell how their minds work, or how children think and settle relations with the world. Although these efforts aim to support children, they often aim to regulate and dictate how children should behave. Sarmento [14] divides cultures in the childhood into four structuring axes: interactivity, playfulness, fantasia from reality and reiteration. Therefore, according to Sarmento, children live in the world according to their interactions: through the culture of play, make-believe and zest for repetition. In sum, the concept of childhood or, as Sarmento puts it; Cultures of Childhood are reinvented, institutionalized and reinstitutionalized according to their historical moment. According to Sarmento, from the moment we recognize children as social actors, which is, as capable of action and interpretation. Therefore, societies must give children the right to participate in the processes of normalization of social lives.

Childhood was once invisible, ignored, romanticized, sanctified, demonized, cultured, etc., but currently children are considered as a social group with individuals capable of interacting with the world and are constantly reconfigured in the middle of urban, domestic and digital violence. Children are not seen as passive agents, empty of opinions or obliged to follow what adults impose.
